Sports Update » conference realignmenthttp://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate
Blogging special sports events and storiesSun, 02 Aug 2015 22:50:28 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.2Big 12 expansion: What’s next in shifting college landscape?http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/05/big-12-expansion-whats-next-in-shifting-college-landscape/
http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/05/big-12-expansion-whats-next-in-shifting-college-landscape/#commentsThu, 24 May 2012 15:53:44 +0000http://blog.chron.com/longhorns/?p=2673AUSTIN — As the Big 12 braces for what could be a third consecutive summer of realignment, here is where the principals stand in the college sports story that refuses to go away:

Big 12 interim commissioner Chuck Neinas and incoming commissioner Bob Bowlsby both have maintained the league has had no talks with any schools about expanding. Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds has told everyone who will listen that his preference is to keep the Big 12 at its current 10-team membership, which is attractive enough to TV partners to pay each school an estimated $20 million per year, and could also provide the simplest path to a four-team national football playoff.

That being said, Neinas, Bowlsby and Dodds all have acknowledged that expansion remains an option. Earlier this month, the chairman of Florida State’s board of trustees criticized the ACC’s new TV deal and suggested that the Seminoles should consider joining the Big 12. Later, FSU’s president tried to quell talk of a move, but the rumors persist. This week, Orangebloods.com reported that FSU and several other ACC teams have “reached out” to the Big 12 about the possibility of joining. ACC commissioner John Swofford, however, said he’d be “shocked” if any of his member schools were talking to the Big 12.

The most attractive prize for any league looking to expand remains Notre Dame, and Dodds has made no secret of his close relationship with Fighting Irish athletic director Jack Swarbrick. Most recently, Dodds told CBSSports.com he’s tried several times since 2010 to convince Notre Dame to join the Big 12, but Swarbrick insists the Irish remain committed to the Big East. Still, with the future of that league uncertain, Notre Dame could be looking for a more stable home for its non-football sports. And when its exclusive contract with NBC expires in 2015, its status as a football independent could be up in the air, too.

Because no decisions have been made regarding the future of the Bowl Championship Series, all of this talk could be premature. Multiple reports say a final call on the proposed four-team playoff (beginning in the 2014 season) is expected to be made when the conference commissioners meet June 20 in Chicago. Once everyone has a more definite understanding of what the format will be and where their league fits into it, realignment chatter could get more serious. And then we can start this all over again.

]]>http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/05/big-12-expansion-whats-next-in-shifting-college-landscape/feed/0Texas State’s WAC stay will be brief as Sun Belt beckonshttp://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/05/texas-states-wac-stay-will-be-brief-as-sun-belt-beckons/
http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/05/texas-states-wac-stay-will-be-brief-as-sun-belt-beckons/#commentsWed, 02 May 2012 18:02:45 +0000http://blog.chron.com/areacolleges/?p=867The Associated Press has a short story today about Texas State’s game of conference musical chairs. Other Texas schools are either on the move or expected to shuffle off to various conferences soon.

From the AP:

SAN MARCOS, Texas — Texas State is going to the Sun Belt Conference, a move that will be made after only one season in the WAC.

The Sun Belt Conference said Wednesday that Texas State will join the league in July 2013 and begin conference play for the 2013-14 academic year.

Texas State is going into its first season at the Football Bowl Subdivision level in 2012, when coach Dennis Franchione will lead the Bobcats into what will be their only WAC season. The school has 16 varsity programs.

The Bobcats are leaving the Southland Conference in July for the WAC, but will spend only one year in that league before going to the Sun Belt.

Getting dizzy trying to keep up with all conference moves? CBSSports has an article that lists who goes where. Check it out here.

]]>http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/05/texas-states-wac-stay-will-be-brief-as-sun-belt-beckons/feed/0Playoff is welcome news for fans, but what does it mean for UH and the Big East?http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/04/playoff-is-welcome-news-for-fans-but-what-does-it-mean-for-uh-and-the-big-east/
http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/04/playoff-is-welcome-news-for-fans-but-what-does-it-mean-for-uh-and-the-big-east/#commentsFri, 27 Apr 2012 17:44:38 +0000http://blog.chron.com/cougars/?p=6962The Bowl Championship Series took a step toward creating a college football playoff, welcome news for college football fans. But what does it mean for those schools like Houston, who joined an automatic-qualifying conference league like the Big East, with AQ status being eliminated?]]>For college football fans, Thursday was a seminal day. A day that frankly, many wondered and even doubted would ever come.

This summer, conference commissioners will present several variations of a four-team playoff to their leagues to get input before making a decision on what the future will be. As for what it could look like, here’s a guess. Also included in Thursday’s news was the fact that the BCS will eliminated automatic-qualifying (AQ) status from the leagues, so there will be no such thing as AQs and non-AQs.

While losing AQ status isn't ideal for the new Big East, it isn't a death knell for Houston and the other new members of the league (Sam Khan/Chronicle)

So what does it mean for the newly-formed Big East Conference and, by extension, Houston? Was the move all for naught?

Not at all.

The Big East, Houston, Boise State and everyone else involved in the realignment that took place that turned the Big East conference from a mostly geographically-correct one to one that spans four time zones and both coasts, were well aware that this could happen. Big East commissioner John Marinatto said as much, as did many athletic directors. They knew it was a possibility.

Yes, AQ status was a big motivating factor for the Houston, SMU and Central Floridas of the world to move to the Big East but it wasn’t the only factor. As it goes with just about everything in sports these days, it was very much about money.

More money than what those teams were getting in their current league.

The fact that the Big East membership will help the incoming teams financially isn’t going to change. When the Big East renegotiates its television rights agreement it brings a lot of appeal to the table: 14 of the league’s schools are located in the top 30 media markets in the country and 18 are in the top 50. The league spans four time zones and will have the ability to have four separate kickoffs on a college football Saturday that don’t overlap. The league is expecting to negotiate a deal that gets each of its teams revenue of at least eight figures a year. That’s quite a bump up for the incoming Conference USA schools, who currently receive around roughly $3 million.

The bad part: For competition’s sake, the removal of AQ status wasn’t ideal for the new Big East. By having an AQ berth in the current BCS setup, that was guaranteed revenue in excess of $22 million in the 2011 season, the same as the Southeastern Conference, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac-12 and Atlantic Coast Conference). By removing AQ status, it’s likely going to leave the bowls to contract individually with the conferences like they did in the days before the BCS was conceived. If the Big East doesn’t improve it’s performance on the football field, that could be a tough break since it won’t match the appeal of currently superior football leagues like the SEC or the Big Ten.

In those instances, SEC teams are going to get better bowl tie-ins than the Big East. Certainly not ideal. The only way the league can reach a level playing field with the other “power conferences” (SEC, Big 12, Big Ten, Pac 12, ACC) is to match them performance wise, year-in, year-out, which they haven’t in recent years.

Part of that will be helped by the incoming football members. Boise State has played with the big boys when it has gone head-to-head with them and has been nationally-ranked on a perennial basis in recent years and Houston has emerged as a team that has proven it can be top-25 worthy. The Big East is going to have to hope that continues and that its current members and other new members raise their games.

Ultimately, when it comes to the four-team playoff, the chances of the Big East or a team like Houston reaching it probably won’t be greatly affected. It was already an uphill battle for a Big East team or a non-AQ team to be included in the national championship discussion and that will still be the case. SEC, Big 12, Big Ten and Pac 12 teams, for the time being, will be ranked higher and looked upon more favorably than those Big East schools.

But the move is still an upgrade. An undefeated team in Conference USA has no chance to play for a national championship. An undefeated team in the Big East? It may not be a lock but it certainly has a better chance than a C-USA team does. (As Jim Carrey once said in Dumb and Dumber, “So you’re telling me there’s a chance?”)

In all seriousness, the Big East is still a step up for Houston and its fellow C-USA teams that are joining. More money, more media exposure, better competition — in football and basketball. A Big East bowl tie-in will likely be better than a C-USA bowl tie-in, so it’s still an upgrade for the new members. Will it have a place in the new college football playoff? Only time will tell.

]]>http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/04/playoff-is-welcome-news-for-fans-but-what-does-it-mean-for-uh-and-the-big-east/feed/45UH basketball: Barnes and Stiggers declared out for seasonhttp://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/02/uh-basketball-barnes-and-stiggers-declared-out-for-season/
http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/02/uh-basketball-barnes-and-stiggers-declared-out-for-season/#commentsTue, 07 Feb 2012 22:34:38 +0000http://blog.chron.com/cougars/?p=5769After being hindered by injuries throughout this season, Houston head coach James Dickey officially declared freshman guards LeRon Barnes (groin) and Jherrod Stiggers (knee) out for the remainder of the 2011-12 season on Tuesday.

In addition, UH will apply for medical redshirts for Barnes and sophomore forward Mikhail McLean, who was sidelined by a stress fracture in his right foot that required surgery.

Barnes, a product of North DeSoto High School in Stonewall, La., saw action in five games but hasn’t played since Dec. 21 since re-aggravating a strained groin. He averaged 2.2 points and 2.8 rebounds in five games while averaging 13.2 minutes an outing.

Stiggers suffered a knee injury during preseason practice that required arthroscopic surgery. He has since been cleared to practice and worked out with the team on Monday, but since he has not competed in any games, Dickey will use this as a redshirt season for Stiggers, a Terrell High product, so that he’ll be a redshirt freshman next season. Stiggers will continue to practice with the team through season’s end.

McLean, who came from local private school Second Baptist, played in the first five games of the season before suffering his foot injury. He had successful surgery in December and is now off crutches and will continue to rehabilitate.

All three are expected to be at full strength by next season. All three were all expected to be contributors and part of the rotation for the Cougars this season, but their absence has limited Houston to just eight active scholarship players for the majority of this season.

]]>http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/02/uh-basketball-barnes-and-stiggers-declared-out-for-season/feed/4A quick glance at the Cougars’ recruiting class heading into the home stretchhttp://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/01/a-quick-glance-at-the-cougars-recruiting-class-heading-into-the-home-stretch/
http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/01/a-quick-glance-at-the-cougars-recruiting-class-heading-into-the-home-stretch/#commentsTue, 24 Jan 2012 16:50:54 +0000http://blog.chron.com/cougars/?p=5556We take a brief look at the current commitments in the Houston Cougars' 2012 football recruiting class with little more than a week left in the process. National signing day is Feb. 1.]]>National signing day is fast approaching. The first day that high school seniors in the class of 2012 can sign a national letter of intent with the football school of their choice is Feb. 1, which is a week from Wednesday.

Currently, the Houston Cougars have 19 verbal commitments in their class plus one transfer. There has been a little bit of movement in the last few days in the class.

The staff picked up a new commitment from Cedar Hill linebacker Steven Taylor. Taylor is a 6-1, 205-pound inside linebacker for Cedar Hill, a perennial high school power program in the South Dallas area. Taylor also had offers from UTEP, Arkansas State and Central Arkansas. Houston offered Taylor last week and it wasn’t long before he decided he was bound for Cullen Boulevard.

The Cougars have lost a pair of commitments as well. Port Arthur Memorial receiver Jhajuan Seales, who had committed to Houston on Jan. 16, changed his verbal commitment to Oklahoma State on Sunday, less than a week after committing to UH. Seales has seen recruiting pick up steam late in the process, going from having no offers to having six. He took an official visit to Stillwater over the weekend and committed on Sunday. Also, Destrehan (La.) defensive tackle Marrick Charles is no longer committed to the Cougars. Charles is a 6-3, 295-pound defensive tackle who has offers from a pair of schools in his state (Louisiana Tech, Louisiana-Lafayette) as well as Arkansas, Southern Mississippi and Tennessee, among others, according to Rivals.com. Houston is heavy on the defensive line class this year, with five other commitments at that spot currently.

Look for Houston to try to add several more commitments in the last week. Don’t be surprised to see a couple of receivers added and perhaps a quarterback. Remember that verbal commitments are non-binding and do not become official until a prospect signs a national letter of intent on Feb. 1.

Two names worth keeping an eye on in the next week are Fort Bend Marshall cornerback John Gibson and West St. Mary (La.) receiver Jontrey Tillman. Gibson was committed to Arkansas and Tillman was committed to Stanford but both are now looking for new homes.

Angleton’s Ryan Jackson was one of the top running backs in the Houston area this season, rushing for 1,703 yards and 23 touchdowns (Thomas Shea/For the Chronicle)

* — Note: Trevon Randle is a transfer from LSU. He enrolled in classes for the spring semester but will have to sit out the 2012 season per NCAA transfer rules.

• • •

Houston and the other new Big East Conference members have a new league mate.

Navy and the Big East will announce later today that the Midshipmen will join the conference in 2015, according to CBSSports.com.

Once all the dust settles on teams leaving and teams joining, Navy will bring the league’s football membership to 11 teams. Navy will be joining as a football-only member and its addition means that exit fee will now be raised to $10 million. The original exit fee was $5 million.

Navy will join Boise State, Central Florida, Houston, SMU and San Diego State as new members to the league. Boise State, San Diego State and Navy will be football-only members, while UCF, UH and SMU will join in all-sports. The other five schools will join in time for the 2013 football season.

• • •

Tickets go on sale today for the 2012 Houston College Classic at Minute Maid Park.

The College Classic annually features six college baseball teams from the area, state and nation for three days in March. This year’s field includes Houston, Rice, Texas, Texas Tech, Arkansas and Tennessee.

Three of the teams in the field were ranked in the preseason top 15 by Baseball America: Arkansas (fourth), Rice (sixth) and Texas (13th).

UH will play Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas Tech in the College Classic. The full schedule is below. Tickets can be purchased online at www.astros.com/collegeclassic, by phone at 1-877-9ASTROS and at Astros’ Ticketmaster outlets in the Houston area.

Practice for the UH baseball team begins on Friday. The Cougars first game is Feb. 17 vs. Delaware at Cougar Field.

]]>http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2012/01/a-quick-glance-at-the-cougars-recruiting-class-heading-into-the-home-stretch/feed/114The Cougars light up Times Squarehttp://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2011/12/the-cougars-light-up-times-square/
http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2011/12/the-cougars-light-up-times-square/#commentsTue, 13 Dec 2011 22:26:02 +0000http://blog.chron.com/cougars/?p=5111The Houston Cougars got a New York City-style welcome to the Big East Conference this week in Times Square. The Cougars, as well as the four other schools who were officially added to the conference as part of its expansion last week, were displayed prominently on a billboard in Times Square.]]>

Photo courtesy of the Big East Conference

The Houston Cougars got a New York City-style welcome to the Big East Conference this week in Times Square.

The Cougars, as well as the four other schools who were officially added to the conference as part of its expansion last week, were displayed prominently on a billboard in Times Square. You can see the image of the Cougars’ welcome to the right.

Boise State, Central Florida, San Diego State and SMU all received similar treatment. You can see all five images on the Big East’s Facebook page.

Houston, Central Florida and SMU were added to the Big East last week as full members while Boise State and San Diego State were added as football-only members. The conference had been looking to expand to offset some of the attrition that took place and improve its long-term football viability.

All five members will join the conference on July 1, 2013.

]]>http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2011/12/the-cougars-light-up-times-square/feed/50The Big East wait may soon come to an end for UHhttp://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2011/12/the-big-east-wait-may-soon-come-to-an-end-for-uh/
http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2011/12/the-big-east-wait-may-soon-come-to-an-end-for-uh/#commentsTue, 06 Dec 2011 19:09:12 +0000http://blog.chron.com/cougars/?p=5026The long, winding road to conference realignment may soon find an endpoint for the University of Houston. A person with knowledge of the Big East Conference expansion talks told the Chronicle on Tuesday that the league office is expected to make an announcement regarding its expansion on Wednesday, officially adding UH, Boise State, Central Florida, San Diego State and SMU.]]>The long, winding road to conference realignment may soon find an endpoint for the University of Houston.

The process has been long and tedious as the conference has worked to get back to a respectable number of long term football members. But it sounds like it’s finally going to happen.

The three current Conference USA members — UH, UCF and SMU — will join as all-sports members of the conference while Boise State and San Diego State would be football-only members.

In the meantime, what are your thoughts on the move? Good or bad for UH?

]]>http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2011/12/the-big-east-wait-may-soon-come-to-an-end-for-uh/feed/106A commemorative piece of Curso – err, Corso – UH GameDay history and hoops recapshttp://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2011/11/a-commemorative-piece-of-curso-err-corso-uh-gameday-history-and-hoops-recaps/
http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2011/11/a-commemorative-piece-of-curso-err-corso-uh-gameday-history-and-hoops-recaps/#commentsWed, 23 Nov 2011 07:35:38 +0000http://blog.chron.com/cougars/?p=4753A t-shirt creating Lee Corso's now infamous slip of the tongue at ESPN's College GameDay visit to UH is available, plus updates on the women's and men's basketball games from Tuesday.]]>Those in attendance at ESPN’s College GameDay live broadcast on Saturday morning at Cullen Circle on the University of Houston campus prior to UH’s 37-7 win over SMU may not have all been able to clearly hear Lee Corso’s slip of the tongue, which was caught live over the broadcast airwaves for all those watching to see, certainly heard about it after the fact.

Whether you watched it live or heard about it later, which most UH and even college football observers certainly did, you can now purchase a T-shirt to commemorate the event.

The folks at Smack Apparel, who specialize in creative T-shirts for sports fans, have unveiled a Lee Corso UH/SMU shirt depicting the event. You can click on the photo to get a larger view of the shirt.

Hat tip to CNBC’s sports business reporter Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) for tweeting the image of the shirt.

•••

After an impressive start with wins in each of their first three games, the Houston Cougars men’s basketball squad got knocked from its perch on Tuesday night.

It prevents the Cougars (3-1) from notching their first 4-0 start since the 1997-98 season. The way coach James Dickey and the players tell it, they may have been riding too high since their 87-78 road win over Arkansas on Friday night in North Little Rock.

“I don’t want to take one thing away from them, but I was concerned about us being as sharp, playing with the energy, playing with the enthusiasm that we needed to play with,” Dickey said. “So we’ll go back and look at how we prepared, how we didn’t prepare, for this, and then come back and get better over the next couple of days.”

Alandise Harris, who has been consistently solid for the Cougars this season and was the second-leading scorer with 21 points, said the Cougars focus wasn’t where it needed to be leading up to Tuesday night.

“We just hadn’t been practicing hard since the Arkansas game,” Harris said.

Kirk Van Slyke had a career night, again, upping his previous career high of 19 (Friday vs. Arkansas) by notching 25 points on Tuesday and reaching his previous career high in the first half alone. But beyond Van Slyke and Harris, scoring was at a premium.

Sharpshooters Darian Thibodeaux and Joseph Young went a combined 1-for-13 from the floor and hit just one 3-pointer between them.

The Cougars also were deficient defensively for stretches, particularly in the first half. UH allowed Oakland to go on an 11-0 run midway through the first half to turn a 19-12 UH lead into a 23-19 Oakland lead. Then in the final minute of the half, a 5-0 Oakland run turned a 39-38 UH lead into a 43-38 Oakland lead.

Four Golden Grizzlies (2-2) were in double figures on the night. Oakland moved the ball swiftly and efficiently and found numerous clean looks at the basket.

UH was able to keep pace for the most part but without a real scoring punch from the starting backcourt (12 points combined for Jonathon Simmons, Thibodeaux and Young) it made things difficult on the Cougars.

Don’t let the name or the league fool you. Oakland is coming off back-to-back NCAA Tournament appearances and Summit League championships and is a quality team. 6-10 center Corey Petros (16 points) presented plenty of defensive matchup problems throughout the night and the Golden Grizzlies were able to get to the free-throw line and make them (18-of-21).

“They finished the game out pretty solid,” Van Slyke said. “They played great, they hit big shots, and they were driving the ball in and getting to the free-throw line. They executed.”

But the Cougars definitely have room for improvement.

•••

The tough start for the Cougars women’s squad continued on Tuesday evening as they took a 76-60 defeat at the hands of Oral Roberts at Hofheinz Pavilion.

Freshman forward Terran Alford tied a school record in the loss by grabbing 20 rebounds in 39 minutes of work. Senior guard Roxana Button posted a career-high 27 points for the Cougars, who are beset by injuries and were without guards Porsche Landry, Tasha Tubbs and Mileka Loydrake.

UH (0-4) committed 31 turnovers which hindered the Cougars’ efforts.

With a lot of newcomers on the roster, it’s going to be a process for the Cougars to grow and learn this year, especially for the six freshmen.

“A lot of them came here with the notion that they were going to get a lot of playing time,” UH coach Todd Buchanan said. “It is here and you have to step up and play. This is what real Division I basketball is about. We are going to stay positive and continue to do everything we can do. We are never going to give up. Hopefully it will give them a chance to grow up.”

Multiple reports are saying that talks have broken off between the Big East and BYU. CBS Sports is reporting that the Big East has “moved on” from BYU to possibly looking at San Diego State.

What does this mean for UH? Just some more waiting. It’s no secret that the Conference USA schools that are targets of the Big East — UH, Central Florida and SMU — are ready and willing to join the conference. The effort to make a splash by joining together with Boise State and a potential fifth school (whether it be Air Force, BYU or fill-in-the-blank) has required patience. It’s more of a ‘when’ than an ‘if’ at this point when it comes to the C-USA schools and Boise State heading that way. But certainly patience for those ready has to be wearing thin.

For now, we continue to wait for an announcement of movement.

]]>http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2011/11/a-commemorative-piece-of-curso-err-corso-uh-gameday-history-and-hoops-recaps/feed/24NCAA president on realignment, full cost of attendance, APR, mafia comparisons and morehttp://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2011/11/ncaa-president-on-realignment-full-cost-of-attendance-apr-mafia-comparisons-and-more/
http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2011/11/ncaa-president-on-realignment-full-cost-of-attendance-apr-mafia-comparisons-and-more/#commentsFri, 04 Nov 2011 00:18:31 +0000http://blog.chron.com/cougars/?p=4407NCAA president Mark Emmert was in town on Thursday to speak to the Houston Economics Club at its monthly meeting at the Federal Reserve Bank. Emmert, who has been the NCAA’s president since October 2010, covered a myriad of topics in his speech. Afterward, he had a 12-minute interview session with local media. Here’s the full Q-and-A and below that, some excerpts from his speech:

Q: What’s the difference between perception and reality in the new “full cost of attendance” athletic scholarship legislation?

NCAA president Mark Emmert addressed several topics in his speech to the Houston Economics Club and in an interview session with media (Michael Conroy/AP)

Emmert: This has created a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. There are people that see the increase in the size of that scholarship as ‘pay-for-play.’ The fact is that every college, for all of their students, has something that’s described as the ‘full cost of attendance.’ That’s just a number that they create that includes tuition, fees, room, board, books and supplies and then travel costs, and clothing costs and miscellaneous expenses and all of that. Today, a student-athlete grant-in-aid or scholarship adds up to tuition, fees, room and board and books but doesn’t cover all of those other pieces. So at most schools there’s always a gap and that’s the gap between the size of the scholarship and the full cost of attendance. What the NCAA has approved now is that conferences and schools, if they want to, can close some of that gap — they were never allowed to (before), it was against the rules — they’re allowed to close some of that gap up to $2,000 as long as that doesn’t exceed the full cost of attendance. So the money is just for covering their legitimate documented education expenses. Not for pay for playing a game, it’s still part of their scholarship. That scholarship model has been the same for 40 years, and so it seemed appropriate that this is a time to change it and to cover some of the cost differential for students because what’s happened in those 40 years is that the time commitments of student-athletes has grown dramatically. It used to be that, 20 or 30 years ago, that you could be a football player, a baseball player and you could still have time for a summer job and you could do all the things that a normal student does. For a football player today for example, it’s pretty darn hard to do all that there or for a basketball player. They’re in summer school, they’re working out all the time; it’s pretty much a full-time commitment. So this opportunity allows the closing of that gap in the legitimate costs of education, but not paying someone to play sports.

Q: What’s your expectation on how many schools will do that?

Emmert: I think the majority of the Division I FBS (Football Bowl Subdivision) schools will do that but that’s going to be up to individual conferences.

Q: Do you see that being a challenge for institutions with lower budgets for athletics?

Emmert: Sure, they’re going to have to make decisions whether or not they want to go in that direction. I think again, the majority of them will decide to do it, at least partially, but those are local decisions as they should be, just like the pay of a coach should be.

Q: Is there a concern that the measure will widen the gap between the haves and have nots in college athletics?

Emmert: Well the gap right now is pretty enormous. If you look at the lowest-resourced conference, they spend about $40,000 per year per student athlete, for all costs in. The SEC (Southeastern Conference) at the top spends roughly four times that, so (about $150,000) per student. So if you’ve got a gap between $40,000 and a $150,000 (then) $2,000 isn’t going to make much of a difference.

Q: What are your biggest concerns in regards to conference realignment?

Emmert: My concerns about the whole realignment issues aren’t that there’s realignment going on; that’s fine. Schools need to have the ability to pick where they’re going to be as a conference and who they want as their conference teammates but at the same time, I want to make sure — and I’ve been encouraging presidents in particular — to be as thoughtful and careful about those decisions as they can be. They’ve got to look at more than just the bottom line and the presidents are but the fact is, that you’ve got to look at what does this really mean for student-athletes. If you’re flying them halfway across the country to play a mid-week volleyball game and they’ve got to be back in class the next day at nine o’clock, what’s the realities of that? What are the realities of the cost of flying teams all over the country and does that eliminate any economic advantage of being a part of that conference? Are they making the decisions because they’ve got good information because of what’s really going on, or are they doing it out of fear and reactiveness and concern about what may happen somewhere else rather than what’s really going on? As long as the process is thoughtful, deliberative and keeps focus on what student-athletes, how they’re being affected, then they can do what they want to do. My job is to look at intercollegiate athletics as a whole and remind them that they need to be attentive to those things.

Q: Are the student-athletes’ best interests being kept in mind or is it just a money grab?

Emmert: I don’t think that’s entirely right. If you look at a lot of the movement that’s occurred, it hasn’t really shifted the geographic mix very much, A&M moving into the SEC for example, that’s really not a big problem. You’ve got the University of Washington traveling to UCLA on a regular basis, and that’s I don’t know how many miles, over 1,000 miles I suppose. So for A&M to travel to Starkville, Mississippi, isn’t a big travel. In many of these moves, I don’t think it’s going be a problem for student-athletes and for some it could be. We’ll have to wait and see what the real facts are when it all shakes out. I would encourage people to look at what’s really happening. In some cases, the conversation is a lot more dramatic than the realities. There was a conversation about Texas and everybody going to the Pac-12, but of course, they didn’t. They just had conversations.

Emmert: Well obviously he doesn’t know the good that we do and the service that we provide. I don’t know how anyone can make a comment like that when they know that we provide $2 billion worth of financial support to students, that we have graduation rates ahead of non-athletes, that there’s 400,000 young men and women getting to play the sports they love because of us. If that’s the definition of the mafia, it’s a peculiar definition.

Q: Why was the decision made to allow unlimited phone calls and text messages to men’s basketball recruits starting in June of a recruit’s sophomore year?

Emmert: There’s a number of challenges in men’s basketball recruiting and everybody’s pretty well documented them. A big piece of that is during the summer now, prospective student-athletes are engaged in tournaments and working with a lot of third parties, most of which are fine and that works really well and good but it’s also how a lot of the negative third-party influences come to bear. We wanted to provide coaches with an opportunity to get access to student-athletes earlier, so they can build relationships, so the student can decide more based on real knowledge of the coach and vice versa so they don’t just know each other from a handshake and a few voice messages and let them really build strong relationships. And then the same thing with summer contact with current students. So right now the coaches can’t interact with their own players during the summer. Well we want them interacting with their players. The coaches are almost always very positive influences in the lives of these kids. And then when you add to it the new academic standards, the coaches have a vested interest in making sure they’re going to class in the summer if they’re in summer school, that they’re engaged and they’re doing the right things. So I think and obviously the board agrees with me that having more contact between coaches and players is a positive thing.

Q: What have been the biggest concerns expressed to you in the way the Academic Progress Rate standards are enforced?

Emmert: The APR is generally very well embraced as a good measure of how student-athletes are doing in the classroom. That’s been a really nice shift. Ten years ago you would not have asked that question. Ten years ago, the media and the world out there had no way of measuring how a school or a team was doing in the classroom. Now, we’ve got this benchmark. It’s not a perfect measure, there is no perfect measure, but it’s a good one and it gives us all something to pay attention to. Now, with the academic requirements with participation in tournaments, you’re going to be watching it even more. Because all of a sudden (people will ask), ‘Wow, is that team going to be able to get into a bowl game next year?’ because of their school work, not because of their play. I think that’s an incredibly positive development. People are worried about not the number, they’re worried about the transition, is it going to be too fast? Will they get time to adjust? That’s an issue that people are raising. There’s some concern about the raising of initial eligibility standards. Will kids be able to go play? We said here’s the new academic requirements for competition, but not for getting scholarships. The current academic standards are still in place for going to school and getting your scholarship support, but not for competition. So we have an academic redshirt model, if you will. So it won’t deny access to college but it will mean you’ve got to get in there and you’ve got to demonstrate that you’re going to be a good student and then you can play, but until then you can’t travel and you can’t play with the team.

Q: Is there a concern that with the full cost of attendance measure, that it’ll be a recruiting advantage for schools that do it as opposed to those who don’t?

Emmert: First of all, the real competitive equity, if you will, where’s the competitive fairness in of all of this? It’s predominantly inside of a conference. Every team wants to win their conference and they see their competitors as their conference competitors. So this rule that was just passed is to be decided upon at the conference level, not at the individual school level. So if Conference USA says ‘We’re going to do this and everybody’s going to do it,’ then it will be the same across all of Conference USA. Or if the Big 12 says ‘We’re going to do this,’ all of the Big 12 schools will do it. There won’t be that kind of inequity at the conference level. In the more vertical context, the recruiting advantage that a top 10 program has over a bottom 100 team is already so great that that $2,000 is not going to make a difference in a young man or woman’s decision.

From Emmert’s speech:

On scandals that have rocked the NCAA the past few months:It’s been a heck of a year. We’ve had scandals with coaches misbehaving, with players misbehaving, with boosters misbehaving, with whole academic programs misbehaving. We’ve had a tsunami of them. After about six months I sat down with my staff and asked, ‘Is this me? Am I causing this? What’s going on here.’ We have to fix that. That’s undermining and eroding everybody’s confidence it what is an amazing and remarkable American cultural tradition. We’ve got to deal with that.

On stricter Academic Progress Rate (APR) reforms that will increase requirements for schools to be eligible for postseason play:
Last year if that standard had been in place seven teams in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament wouldn’t have been there and eight teams that were in bowl games wouldn’t have been there. Not because they weren’t good enough on the court or the field but because their grades weren’t good enough. That is going to have a huge positive impact.

On the NCAA rulebook:We’ve got to fix these integrity questions. The rulebook right now is ridiculous. It’s 425 pages long for Division I. It has some completely unenforceable, some completely irrelevant and some completely just extraneous rules. We have to throw that stuff away and start with a completely new approach to emphasize those things that are honest-to-goodness threats to the integrity of sports. People always say, ‘What’s that?’ I say, almost always the things that your momma taught you: don’t lie, don’t cheat, don’t engage in academic fraud and don’t engage in bribery. This is not complicated stuff. We’re going to focus on those things and make sure that the penalties line up aggressively around those kinds of issues and not around cell phone calls, the size of envelopes or the kind of meal you’re getting served at lunch. All of which are complex rules in our rulebook right now that don’t really have much of anything to do with anything. We need to make it that when the adults in the room in particular do something to undermine the integrity of intercollegiate athletics and amateurism, we’re going to hammer them. We’re going to hammer them hard and they need to know it.

On the misconception of money made in college athletics:We have some really big financial challenges that candidly, most people get wrong, because they think there’s too much money in the system. When in fact, if you survey university presidents — which we do all the time, those are our members — you ask them ‘What’s the biggest problem you face in athletics?’ The number one problem by far is, ‘This model isn’t financially sustainable. We cannot keep supporting it at this level. It’s going to go broke.’ It’s not, ‘It’s too much money, we don’t know what to do with all the dough.’ It is, ‘What do we do to maintain this?’ Across the board. ‘It’s too expensive, it doesn’t bring in enough revenue, it doesn’t make sense.’

On conference realignment being the result of schools trying to make up for financial losses:What conferences are trying to do is make sure that they wind up in a powerful media market so that they can maintain revenue to continue to support programs that they’re struggling to support. Keep in mind that 20 (athletic programs) had positive cash flow last year, so all the others are taking money from students, from tuition, from their own academic budget. If you looked at the University of California at Berkeley, one of the finest academic institutions in America, had to take $15 million the year before last and take it out of the academic budget and give it to the athletic department to keep the athletic department afloat. So is Berkeley happy about the new media deal with the Pac-12? Absolutely, because it will cover that hole for them. We’ve got a financial model that also has a scale problem. If you look at Division I, there are schools with budgets of $150 million – that would be (Texas), Ohio State and Alabama and we have Division I schools with $5 million budgets. That’s broken, we have to fix that part as well.

On if college sports were run like a business:If intercollegiate sports were a business, then there would be many fewer schools. Only 60 percent of FBS football teams make money. All the rest lose money. There would be a number in the state of Texas that would drop football. The ones who are successful at it, do really well at football. Every athletic department uses football to fund all or part of their other sports…..You would eliminate all the olympic sports, all the women’s sports. Baseball makes money at about four schools in America, maybe five. That’s it, most all the others lose money on it. For the most part, if it’s not on major TV outlets, you wouldn’t do it. You would drop it. Of the 11 Division I (FBS) conferences, 40 percent probably would get out of sports altogether.

]]>http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2011/11/ncaa-president-on-realignment-full-cost-of-attendance-apr-mafia-comparisons-and-more/feed/18Cougars inching closer to big things on, off the fieldhttp://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2011/11/cougars-inching-closer-to-big-things-on-off-the-field/
http://blog.chron.com/sportsupdate/2011/11/cougars-inching-closer-to-big-things-on-off-the-field/#commentsWed, 02 Nov 2011 05:01:40 +0000http://blog.chron.com/cougars/?p=4387This is shaping up to be an interesting year for University of Houston athletics. As the days and weeks go by, UH inches closer to taking significant steps. Some of them are on the field, some are off.]]>This is shaping up to be an interesting year for University of Houston athletics. As the days and weeks go by, UH inches closer to taking significant steps. Some of them are on the field, some are off.

On the field, the football team has now tied the best start in school history, which is 8-0. If the Cougars secure a victory on Saturday when they meet UAB at 6 p.m. at Legion Field in Birmingham, it will give UH its first 9-0 start in the history of the program.

Things are looking up for the Houston Cougars on many fronts. (James Nielsen/Chronicle)

The Cougars are ranked 14th in both human polls and No. 13 in the Bowl Championship Series rankings – which is UH’s highest BCS ranking in program history. The buzz around quarterback Case Keenum seems to increase with every NCAA record he breaks.

But the Cougars say they’re proceeding cautiously, wary of what may happen if they listen to or read too much about the accolades.

“We try not to look at the big picture too much,” Keenum said. “We obviously know that there is something special out there in front of us, but a lot of these guys were around in 2009 when we got up pretty high in the rankings and fell off towards the end of the year. We know that was fun, but we also know that there is a lot more out there. We’ve been to this point and fell off and that’s not somebody anyone wants to do. So we know the importance of taking it one week at a time and we know the importance of winning above anything else. That’s what’s most important to us and we’re going to go around and give it our absolute best every time we go out on the field.”

UH coach Kevin Sumlin said he has not hid all the outside buzz from his team throughout this season, but rather has addressed it so that he can get his message across to the players. This week was no different.

“We talked about it (Monday),” Sumlin said. “With winning, that comes along with it. We’re the same team Thursday night after we won the game that we were on Sunday night at 7:15 (p.m., when the BCS rankings were released). That’s a number to put on it. We’re happy about it. As I’ve said many times, it’s great for our university, great for our city, great for our fans. As a team, we’ve got our own goals. To achieve those goals, we’re going to have to keep winning. If you keep winning, those things will take care of themselves.”

For those of you wondering about the BCS berths in regards to non-AQ teams, here’s a rundown of how it works. Obviously, if UH continues to win and get closer to running the table, we’ll dig deeper into this but just to give you an idea:

There is one “automatic berth” available for grabs to a non-automatic qualifying conference school. In order to get that berth, the non-AQ school must win its conference and be ranked in the top 12 of the BCS rankings OR win its conference, be ranked in the top 16 of the BCS rankings and be ahead of one of the AQ conference champions.

Even if a second team fulfills the above requirement, only one team will get the “automatic berth.” Any other non-AQ teams would have to be selected for one of the at-large berths (and if a non-AQ team gets an “automatic” that leaves just three at-large berths for the BCS games).

I know several readers have commented and discussed the BCS/AQ/Non-AQ situation and because of all that’s going on, I haven’t had a chance to get to everyone’s comments. But hopefully that clears up the picture a little bit.

The exact timetable for when “formal invitations” actually go out is unclear, but Big East commissioner John Marinatto said on Tuesday that his hope is to have this part of the expansion process wrapped up within the next week. The Big East is trying to add six schools and Marinatto said that a “formal invitation” won’t go out to a school until the Big East has assurances that said school is going to accept.

We’ve learned throughout this entire realignment process that a done deal isn’t a done deal until it’s official (and Marinatto alluded to that as well), but it seems as if the Big East is getting closer to executing its expansion plan. So stay tuned.

•••

A couple of quick side notes:

Don’t forget that the Houston Hardwood Tipoff is at 6 p.m. on Wednesday at the Athletics/Alumni Center. Both the men’s and women’s basketball teams will be introduced, have some fun and games (dunk contests, two-ball competitions and even freestyle rap), both head coaches will speak and there will be some prizes and giveaways, including textbook scholarships for UH students. Admission is free to the public.

For those wondering, I’m told that running back Bryce Beall, who missed the last couple of games due to an injury, will be available this weekend against UAB.